Anzac Day at Tobruk and beepers

If anyone would like to hear how my husband spent Anzac Day - have a look at this article in the Age.

They are all due here tomorrow night - and I will have every bedroom in the house full.

I am trying some serious displacement activity, and have just pinned a quilt upstairs.

I have been using my new machine and trying out the Stitch Regulator. You can set a beeper to tell you if you are going faster than the machine can keep up with. I don't use the beeper, as there is a split second on every swirl where I am just a micron too fast, and I actually cannot see a difference in stitch length. I was just being driven crazy by the somewhat dememted beeping.

As a method of coping it reminds me of last year when I took a service taxi to Abu Dhabi from Dubai. The taxi driver handed me two plastic wrapped things as we left Dubai. I thought they were lollies (and he was doing the 'before the plane takes off' thing) and thanked him. Then I realised they were ear plugs. I was still asking what they were for when he floored his foot on the accelerator and I found out!

Cars in the Emirates are fitted with a beeper that goes off if you go over 120 kilometres per hour. He screamed down that highway at about 150 kph with the beeper going flat out. It has just accurred to me that me deciding not to put the beeper on is a bit of the same solution as his handing me earplugs!

Commonwealth War Graves

I doubt if there could be a better place to have Anzac Day that a Commonwealth Cemetery surrounded by those who died. I took a photograph of the laying of the weaths, with far too little light and the flash turned off. The soldiers of the MFO who were laying the wreaths looked like ethereal ghosts on the picture, drifting like smoke. I was about to delete the image, but realised that it summed up the feeling of the morning, with the dead all around and among us.

"They shall not grow old as we that are left grow old,
Age shall not weary them or the years condemn
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them."

These words fell softly into the air, raising the hair on the back of my neck and putting a lump in my throat.

With the dawn came the braying of a donkey, a twittering bird's chorus from the trees all around us, and a far off rooster calling to his harem, and a far off mosque. It was easy to realise that not much has really changed since the war in some parts of Egypt.

The Catafalque Party Before Dawn

In the old Cairo Commonwealth War Cemetery.

Laying of wreaths

Attending the Service

The Last Post

The MFO in Egypt

24th April, the Day before Anzac Day

I was walking the island today shopping for Anzac Day and our large Australian breakfast, and for our ministerial visit. Bob is in Libya with the Minister and his party at the moment, and they will spend Anzac Day in Tobruk, a five hour drive from Benghazi, which is itself a two hour flight from Tripoli. I guess I am trying to say that it seems a very long way away. It is almost four weeks since I saw my husband – I was away for three weeks, and he has been away since two days before I returned.

I bought flowers – and fifty dollars worth filled the house and provided a spectacular arrangement in the front hall. I added a tall vase of stunning white lilies – the kind that features in Annunciation paintings between the Angel and Mary.

They have a really heavenly scent, and the whole house smells delicious.

Then there was another somewhat unexpected trip, when the cook who is going to help to prepare the breakfast on the outside barbecue insisted that he wanted three very small non-stick pans to prepare the eggs. We only had one, and that was obviously not nearly enough. I am still not convinced that it will work, but I set off through the streets to another shopping area to find small fry pans.

In the process I bought some little biscuit jars for homemade biscuits for the guest rooms for our visit, and some woven baskets to hold apples also for the guest rooms.

I left – very loaded with bags – and walked out to the gamut of the flower and peach sellers.

With a houseful of flowers I was somehow talked into a huge – monumental – armful of larkspurs. I have always loved these. It doesn’t seem to matter what you do with them, they look graceful arranged in any thing and in any way. They must be the most forgiving flower. These dance – every shade of purple and blue and lilac and white and the softest blush of pink. Somehow they evoke wildflowers in jam jars even when in tall vases.

Four large bunches cost all of four dollars Australian.

I filled six large vases (not all shown) and four small ones, and just for good measure (and because I had run out of places to put them) I also gave a large bunch to the first secretary who dropped in with paperwork and stayed for a gin and tonic.

The car will come at 4.20 am to take us to the Dawn Service.

I just wish dawn wasn't quite so early!

Abu Dhabi Airport

How is this for a hexagon pattern?

Work from my clever students

Amina's Camel

I can't send them all - so just three from Abu Dhabi, and one from
Dubai. Amina is in Abu Dhabi.

Janine Ibbini's wonderful reflections

Christie's Parrot